I am SUDDENLY getting error messages and crashes. I have MONTHS worth of work placed into a timeline. It's time to start making screeners for others to see what I've done. A few days ago I exported the timeline, imported the mpeg2 file into Encore and burned a screener. Today - NO GO!. The same timeline, the same process. I keep getting the following useless message:

ERROR COMPILING MOVIE

Unknown Error

I tried rendering the work area first, no change. I have tried dynamically linking the timeline to Encore and also can not burn a disc. There's no error message in Encore, it just freezes up during the build process.

I have TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS AND A YEAR OF MY LIFE bundled up in this timeline. Any help will be grately appreciated.

CS5.5. System is a 2009 MacPro, 24GB of RAM, 6TB of hard drive space on 4 drives. I tried changing the scratch disc, no go. I tried turning off all the audio tracks, no change. I tried turning off all the video tracks, no change.

Since you don't provide much in the way of detail... here are some general guesses

As well as the below, right click the Encore icon and select Run as Administrator, which is NOT the same thing as running the computer with the Administrator account, and which fixes several "odd" problems... To create a dual layer DVD (or a BluRay?), you MUST have Encore set to use the Run as Administrator option

Create an ISO (Encore) or folder on your hard drive (Encore or Premiere Elements) and then use the FREE http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download to write files or folders or ISO to disc (send the author a PayPal donation if you like his program)

And a comment... every day that ends with no problems... do a project "save as" with an incremental project name... movie001... movie002... and so on... so problems may be bypassed by going back a version or two

If you read carefully, you'll see that the problem is not with Encore or in the DVD burning process. It's within Premiere, I can't even render a section of my timeline without getting the error message. It seems to be happening in one section of the timeline, as previous exports and renders all seem to stop at around the same place. I'm checking into what's there and I will report back if I can figure this out.

The problem appears to be with a nested sequence. Why it transcoded a few days ago, I can't answer. But after trying your suggestions to no avail, I followed a hunch, experimenting by exporting sections of the timeline. In doing this I was able to narrow the problem down to one spot. There was a nested sequence in that spot, and being ALL TOO AWARE of the bugginess of this "feature", I unlinked the clip, and replaced the audio for that section with and AIFF file rendered from the original sequence. That appears to have done the trick.

I hope SOMEONE at Adobe, someone who has some authority to tell what the programmers to work on that is, is monitoring this thread. In case they don't get it, I'll spell it out for them:

If the nested sequence worked in your earlier export, something tells me that the sequence got corrupted at some point. This happens from time to time in all NLEs, particularly on projects that are complex, long, or have been in use for some months. As a safety, it helps to back up your sequences by duplicating them (including nested sequences) periodically. This ensures that you always have a back up for your main sequences (and nested sequences) in case something goes awry.

Nested sequences do work, and are very handy in many operations. However, they are subject to corruption - as are all sequences and clips. In any case, I'm glad you figured it out.

Thanks for the input Kevin. I have to say, I've had trouble with nested sequences from the get-go. I'm using AVCHD, h.264/Canon and prores source files. Unless I monkey with the audio tracks, the program wants to "render required files" every time I hit the space bar. Seems like there's lots of room for improvement here.